Getting there without gasoline this Earth Day, and thereafter … at least until reruns start

I’ll need to see it to believe it, but for Earth Day, the Science Channel is promising to show us how to travel coast to coast without using gasoline. Among the fuels used were stale sandwiches.

The channel’s Cool Fuel series kicks off, and here’s how they’re pitching it:

Cow manure, hot rocks, corn whisky, sugarcane, garbage and wind — a COOL FUEL is anything other than gasoline and Australian eco-adventurer Shaun Murphy uses all of them while he and his three-person crew travel 16,000 miles through every landscape in America.

Now, it took Murphy and his dog Sparky — dontcha love a show with a dog? — a full eight months to get across the 30 states. I’m not sure how long the series lasts, but I’ll be watching when I can because we here at Dateline Earth are continuing our neverending quest for those 100 one percent solutions to global warming — preferably those that pose the least economic pain. This guy may be on to something — he claims to have done at least some of the trip in a Hummer limousine (and has pictures to prove it).

I was suspicious right away when I saw that Daryl Hannah and the late Dennis Weaver are involved. (Weaver got two Emmy nominations for his portrayal of a detective on the TV show McCloud, and those of us of a certain age may also remember him in Gunsmoke, where he won an Emmy, and Gentle Ben; Hannah is I guess best known these days for her Kill Bill appearances.)

It’s not that I have anything against them, it’s just that they’re actors. But I guess supposedly sane voters have put two California actors into the governor’s office, and after all, even if it’s a show about energy policy, this is TV! In the show, Weaver shows off his energy-efficient Colorado home Earthship, while Hannah gets behind the wheel of a truck powered by biodiesel. Both get visits from the intrepid Murphy and his shaggy sidekick.

For more information check the show’s website, complete with listings. Also see a good write-up, along with a slide show and a somewhat-related video, from MSNBC’s Miguel Llanos here.